


one look, dark room, meant just for you

by nonisland



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Accidental Voyeurism, Dubious Consent, During Timeskip (Fire Emblem: Three Houses), Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, FE3H Kinkmeme, Guilt, Masturbation, Mutual Pining, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Unplanned Exhibitionism, Unresolved Romantic Tension, Unresolved Sexual Tension, metaphorical lichtenberg figures of stunned longing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-23
Updated: 2020-06-23
Packaged: 2021-03-03 23:06:52
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,639
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24883546
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nonisland/pseuds/nonisland
Summary: She opens her eyes again—when had she closed them?—and sees that Hubert is still there. He’s turned, either to face the tent or to look away from it. He’s heard her or he hasn’t, and Edelgard doesn’t know which.
Relationships: Edelgard von Hresvelg/Hubert von Vestra
Comments: 12
Kudos: 78
Collections: FE3H Kink Meme





	one look, dark room, meant just for you

**Author's Note:**

> **Content note:** The particular flavor of the dubious consent tagged for in this work of fiction is “everyone involved wants everything that is happening, but neither of them has actually given, or requested, consent”—I hesitated for a while over whether to explicitly warn for noncon, but ultimately decided not to because neither participant feels like anything bad has been done to them. Still, please read with caution or not at all if this is likely to be a problem for you.
> 
> Written for the [](https://3houseskinkmeme.dreamwidth.org/profile)[**3houseskinkmeme**](https://3houseskinkmeme.dreamwidth.org/) [prompt](https://3houseskinkmeme.dreamwidth.org/476.html?thread=207580#cmt207580) “Hubert watches her all the time. He is behind walls, behind doors, in the ceiling, you name it, he is there to listen and to protect her. Edelgard knows that. Edelgard reaches the conclusion that she very much enjoys masturbating while knowing that Hubert is watching her and Hubert reaches the conclusion that he very much enjoys watching her masturbate. Bonus: They reach this conclusion at the same time, but separately. More Bonus: Guilt”
> 
> Title from Taylor Swift’s “You Are In Love”.
> 
> * * *

The first time it happens—the first time Edelgard _knows_ it happens—is a few months after she declared war, when she wakes from a nightmare she already can’t remember. Her heart pounds against her ribs so hard her whole body trembles with it; it takes her longer than she’d like to catch her breath. She lies very still and lets the fear ebb away again.

She’s awake now, little as she’d like to be. If she were back in Enbarr, or in her old room at Garreg Mach, she would get up and go for a walk. She is instead lying in a cot in a tent—a luxurious tent, but still a tent—near one of her army’s encampments, and she would undo all the good of visiting to raise morale if someone found her wandering afraid and restless around the camp, unable to control even her own mind.

She rolls over and stares at the far wall of the tent. It looks much like the near one.

Elsewhere she might read for a while, or request a snack or a mug of herbal tea, to give herself an excuse to be awake that would alarm no one. Here she has no books, and the army’s cooks should not be troubled for a snack in the middle of the night when they’ll have so many to feed in the morning.

The only cure for insomnia she knows that will keep her from needing to get out of her cot to seek it is orgasm. Without much interest, she pulls her nightgown up to her waist and gets a hand between her thighs, a gentle but firm pressure until her body starts to respond. She goes impatiently for her clit at the first promise of arousal and hisses in discomfort at her own touch.

A twig cracks outside her tent.

Edelgard freezes. Her eyes snap open again.

The moon is full, shining from—was it south, that they’d placed the tent facing? Whatever direction it is, a shadow falls across the tent in front of her: a man in profile, one she’d recognize anywhere. Hubert is guarding her sleep, as best he can.

Suddenly Edelgard is feverishly hot. She can feel her heartbeat through her whole body, roaring in her ears, throbbing between her legs. Her hand is still there, covering herself modestly, and she rocks up against it with a gasp that’s half surprise and half pleasure.

Hubert’s shadow doesn’t move. Their two tents were set a little way away from everything else, and he would hardly let anyone else sneak up on her. She hadn’t realized he’d be guarding her this— _oh_ , she’s wet, she thinks dizzily, letting her legs fall open as she strokes along her folds, shivering under her own touch—guarding her this _closely_ , she hadn’t thought he’d be—

Her cunt flutters and clenches on air. The cot creaks under her as Edelgard angles her hips up, pressing a knuckle against her opening and panting for breath. She rarely bothers to put anything inside herself but oh, oh _fuck_ , she wants—she wants to make it last this time, she wants the teasing pressure that isn’t what she needs to come, she wants to draw this out until she cries out in relief.

She pushes two fingers into herself, expecting the stretch to sting a little, and whimpers at how easily they go in instead. Wetness pulses against her hand. She opens her eyes again—when had she closed them?—and sees that Hubert is still there. He’s turned, either to face the tent or to look away from it. He’s heard her or he hasn’t, and Edelgard doesn’t know which.

Would he have come in if he thought she was really in distress, before? Opened the tent flap and seen her—she can hear the sound her fingers make as she fucks herself on them and that makes her even hotter, her whole body straining into her touch—lying there like this, bare and open—she brings her other hand down to her clit, sparks flaring under her skin as she circles it desperately—so far from his Emperor Edelgard, just a woman who _wants_ things. He’s always asked her to be the Emperor, always, but he’s standing there now, _listening_ while she strokes herself off, mindless and wild—

Edelgard’s hips arch off the bed as she comes. She moans, a high lost noise from the back of her throat, and the sound of her own voice sends an aftershock rippling through her.

As the sweat cools on her body and her heart slowly settles back to normal Edelgard tries to marshal her reeling thoughts into some kind of order. That had been…good. Shatteringly good; dangerously memorable.

She had been thinking about Hubert. Not just thinking about him, as she’s done sometimes in the past and not given too much weight to; she’s had passing fantasies about other people she knows, too, because who else does she even know to fantasize about? But she wouldn’t…she wouldn’t have _done_ it. She would have been mortified if any of them had walked in on her.

She had liked that Hubert had.

 _Liked_ is too mild a word—it had driven her half out of her mind. She had wanted him to hear her. She had wanted him to _see_ her. If he had actually come in to her tent, and looked at her, and touched her— She shivers at the thought, and not from fear.

Edelgard reaches two conclusions, equally inescapable: first, she is going to need to re-evaluate her relationship with Hubert; and second, she is going to wake up sticky and disgusting tomorrow. She kicks the sheet off the cot to try to air it out, and looks up at the tent flap as she does. His shadow is gone.

She _means_ to re-evaluate her relationship with Hubert, but she’s luxuriously tired, her body finally worn out and content. She falls asleep before she can get any further than, _I’ve never been able to imagine my life without him, but I didn’t…_

* * *

It is not the first time that Hubert has stumbled across Lady Edelgard pleasuring herself, though it has hardly been a regular occurrence. The imperial palace in Enbarr is honeycombed with secret passages and spyholes, and it is necessary to check them, regularly, to be sure that no danger has befallen her nor have any untrustworthy persons gained access.

She is far too intelligent to be unaware. He has arranged for chamomile tea to appear in her rooms on weeks when the nightmares are particularly bad, though she does not favor it as a rule; she must know that there are times that he observes her.

Always before, though, he has been able to _leave_. He has never deliberately spied on her as she undresses, or bathes, or—or brings herself to release, as she is doing tonight. He cannot help the glimpses he has caught, but he can help his own reactions. If he has pieced together a series of fragments, of the shape of her limbs or the way her skin flushes with passion, that is the curse of a well-trained memory.

Tonight it had been a nightmare when he first went to check on her. He would swear that under any oath. And then…

Her first gasp of pleasure had shocked him like a casting of Thoron: the electric jolt of it, the scorching brilliance, the branching echoes blazing on his skin that took days or weeks to fade. Like enough, in other words, that thinking about magic distracted him for a moment. Only for a moment.

Now, the cot creaks.

And now, he can hear her quickened breathing, or perhaps that is just his own. He would move, if he could trust his footing. He had broken a twig, moments ago; now he feels he might carelessly blunder into an entire woodpile.

Another man might distract himself with chilling thoughts of the horrors that he’s seen. Hubert does not have that luxury: the worst horrors he has seen he has wrought with his own hands, _for_ Lady Edelgard, and he cannot…he cannot.

She whimpers, and he turns away, as if no longer seeing the cloth of her tent out of the corner of his eye will change anything. He is achingly hard, his cock straining against the trousers he regrets not having removed. He is _guarding_ Lady Edelgard, he reminds himself. He is _protecting_ her. It would be an intolerable betrayal to seize this moment for his own gratification.

Not being able to see the closed and tied flap of her tent is worse. It might be open. She might be lying on a bed, in a space that he had the right to enter, looking at _him_ —

No.

The cot creaks again, louder, as she gives a soft moaning cry. Then there is silence, except the pounding of Hubert’s own blood in his ears. How any blood can be spared for his ears he could not possibly venture a guess.

There is nothing to be gained by remaining on guard here. A dozen knights of Seiros could walk past him as he stands and he would be so distracted by his intemperate lust that he would fail to notice the design of their armor was not that of the Imperial Army’s.

He makes his way gingerly back to his own tent. He undresses, carefully, gritting his teeth against any sound as he eases his trousers down. This would be an excellent time to have any affinity for black magic, but no, he lacks the ability to call ice with a gesture. The night is too warm for discomfort, and he has nothing that lends itself to distraction. He is inescapably aware of his own erection, of the arousal that pulls his whole body taut, of the clinging dampness where he’s leaking into his smallclothes.

Grimly, he lies down. Lady Edelgard is his _emperor_ , is Fódlan’s bright flaming hope. He has sworn her his _service_ , not—

It is perhaps inevitable that the thought makes Hubert’s cock twitch again.

Once, maybe. It might be permissible once, if the alternative is to lie awake all night, not daring to move, and find himself sleepy and distracted the next day. If it is not an indulgence, but an inevitability.

Hubert intends at least not to think of her, but just the sound of his own breath between his teeth as his hand grazes his cock through that thin layer of cloth brings echoes of her gasps to his mind. He is clumsy as he undoes the fastenings of his smalls, clumsy even as he eases them out of the way. He is shaking with need. The _sounds_ she had made—the frantic pace of it, an eternity to him but still something rushed and urgent— He would not have been able to bear it if she had been slower, if she had drawn it out with more of those uneven breaths and soft slick noises.

He doesn’t bother with oil, only licks the palm of his hand, silent and quick. The memory of the pink flash of Edelgard’s tongue strikes him almost painfully with another rolling wave of heat, and he barely manages to choke off the sound he tries to make.

When he finally gets his hand around his cock properly, he has to bite down on the other hand to keep his silence. She _must_ not know that he’s been driven to this. He will not let it change anything, he thinks, even as he works his foreskin over the head and shudders with pleasure and wonders whether she had touched herself gently or roughly. Gently, he thinks, but doesn’t slow his own movements. This is nothing to linger over.

Her hands are small, but hard with callouses. Hubert’s are softer. If her hand closed this firmly around him, if her fingers played this quickly over his most sensitive spots—his balls tighten at the thought; his hips move without his will, fucking helplessly into his grip—it would hurt, if she handled him like this, but it would be something to remember—

He splits a knuckle on his teeth trying not to make a sound as he comes. It does nothing to dim the blinding pleasure, and nothing to ease the guilt that crashes over him immediately after even as his cock is still softening in his hand. He can taste his own blood, ferrous and bright, and his own shame, bitter and clinging. He had pleasured himself to thoughts of his emperor. He had found release imagining her hand on him instead of his own. He has gone to such trouble to spare her from any ugliness, and now, in his own mind, he has tangled her with himself.

Secretly. Without her knowledge, or her permission. Hubert finds a cloth to wipe the mess off his hand and stomach, scrubbing harder than he needs to.

Lady Edelgard has never even needed to ask him to respect her privacy. She has trusted his judgment to protect her. It is not treason, what he just did, but it is…something, still a betrayal of some sort. Contemptible.

He should…apologize. Yes.

It is his intention when he goes to sleep. It is still his intention when he wakes. It is his intention when Lady Edelgard comes out of her tent, fully-dressed with her hair loosely braided down her back, her crown in one hand and a comb in the other. He cannot touch her like this.

“Good morning, Hubert,” she says with a smile that seems strangely soft. She looks _warm_ this morning, not a flame or a star but simple sunlight. When he says nothing, unsure where to start, her smile falters and falls entirely.

This is unendurable. He does not know how to endure it. He has broken her trust, but he cannot bear to lose it. And she needs him to be the same as he always has been: her hand in the shadows, preparing her path to a free Fódlan.

“Good morning,” he says, too slow and too late. “I trust you slept well?”

As soon as he’s said it he wishes he could force the words back into his throat. His horror must be written on his face, but Lady Edelgard’s attention is fortunately on the comb in her hands.

“I…I was troubled by a nightmare,” she says, and then shrugs. “It’s been a challenging few months.” She looks her true size for once: small and delicate. Usually her presence towers over her physical form.

Usually, it is easier to forget her physical form, without the guilty consciousness of it that torments Hubert now. “The first steps on a new path are always difficult,” he says. “If there is anything I can do to ease them further, you have only to command it.” It is true, and familiar. He hopes it brings her some comfort, though he doubts there is truly anything he _can_ do to make this war easier on her.

Her eyes flick up to meet his for just a moment. It is the merest flash of twilit lavender, but he finds it still enough to make his heart stutter. There is color in her cheeks, warming her untouchable pallor dangerously.

She shakes her head. “It is kind of you to offer, but you’re already doing everything I could ask. I would be lost without you.”

Hubert takes the comb when she holds it out to him. His hands do not linger in her hair, warm with sleep. His gloves hide the scab over his knuckle, and when it breaks as he coils her hair around her ears the black leather hides the blood as well.


End file.
